This blog is interesting for Brand managers and Marketing managers. It shows you how games can help to achieve marketing objectives and includes postings about digital interactive branding, like branded utilities and social media for organizations & brands. Check out www.brandnewgame.nl for more information what digital interactive concepts can do for your brand.
Or visit www.brandnewplayground.com for more information about my book!

First Time Research Connects What Consumers See in-Game with What They Buy In-Store

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sep 14, 2010 — Electronic Arts Inc. today revealed results from a study conducted by The Nielsen Company which shows the degree to which brand advertisements within video games can boost real life sales. The study, commissioned by EA on behalf of Gatorade, shows that in-game advertising increased household dollars spent on Gatorade by 24%, and offered a return on investment of $3.11.

The study focused on households that purchased at least one of six EA SPORTS(TM) titles: NHL(R) 09, NHL 10, NBA LIVE 07, NBA LIVE 08, NBA LIVE 09 and NBA Street Homecourt. Gatorade had a variety of product placements within the games including arena signs, players’ water bottles, score updates and other call outs.

The study was based on Nielsen’s US Homescan panel of more than 100,000 households, representative of the US population, including a subset of Homescan homes that scanned video game UPC (Universal Product Codes) barcodes. The scanned barcodes were matched to a reference library of more than 14,000 video game titles. Nielsen compared the households that purchased at least one of the studied games before and after Gatorade branding was integrated into the games (the test group) with households that didn’t purchase one of the games (the control group).

These test and control group homes are projected out to the broad Homescan panel by matching them with the larger Homescan household universe based on similar purchase patterns and demographics in order to achieve a statistically reliable sample. Finally, the sales impact of Gatorade advertising was measured by analyzing and comparing Gatorade purchase behavior between the households that had and hadn’t purchased the games that carried Gatorade advertising.

This is the first time that this type of sales lift analysis has been done for advertising within video games. The study is the result of work undertaken by EA and The Nielsen Company to help marketers better understand the potential of advertising in this space.

“Nielsen’s study is a milestone for interactive entertainment,” said Elizabeth Harz, Senior Vice President of Global Media Sales at EA. “For the first time, advertisers are able to link the value of their in-game marketing or sponsorship to actual sales. Now brands can feel confident adding gaming as a core media channel for their advertising.”

“Video games are a deeply engaging consumer experience,” added Gerardo Guzman, Director, Media Product Leadership for The Nielsen Company. “Bringing our industry accepted ad effectiveness understanding to video games is another way to help marketers understand how consumers respond to advertising across different environments. This should help optimize the impact of and derive a return on media investments. In this case the story is simple – dollars put into video game product placement result in more retail dollars.”

Research done by Nielsen amongst 4.000 US Smartphone users shows that games are still the most popular downloads.

Interesting to see that social networking websites (Facebook & Twitter I guess) are more popular than 'communication apps' like Voice over IP (Skype) and Instant Messaging (MSN). Also the weather and news is high in the list.

A giant moving PlayStation Move controller shook up Amsterdam City this week. The device was actually moving through the streets of Amsterdam. People that took a picture and uploaded it to the website www.room299.com could win great PlayStation prizes.

After writing my book 'Laat met je merk spelen' - soon to be published in English (end of 2010, called A Brand New Playground), I have started to become more philosophical and keep thinking why games are so special to me and to hundreds of millions of people around the globe...
Today I had an insight why games are so cool and the reason is that in games 'heroes never die'... comparable to most books, comics and films. We love heroic creatures and wished they live forever, protecting the world from harm.
It is only in real life that our life is so precious (we have only one). Still - our best friends, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters die even though they've done nothing wrong. In epic films like Lord of the Rings, some heroes die (Boromir), but the real heroes (Frodo and his friends, Aragorn and Gandalf) fortunately don't. I wonder how we would feel if they would all die and we would have to start to get to know new 'heroes' in part 2 and part 3 of the book / film...
How would you feel if you buy a RPG or action game and after playing it for ten minutes, your hero dies and the game is truly 'game-over'? Would you be angry? Or would you accept it and buy the game again (or choose a new / different hero)? I guess you would be really disappointed and angry. How much is a virtual life worth? Wouldn't you be much more cautious playing Call of Duty if you would have to pay a dollar for each life you spoil? It would make the gameplay much more interesting I guess, because the 'stakes are higher'. Maybe it would even be interesting if you gain 50 cents for each kill you make, compensating the costs you make for each life you spoil... ? And the more kills you get, the harder it would be for people to kill you (a build-in experience/skill-model, like in Fallout 3 for instance).
It would be interesting to see if a game-developer would take the chances of developing a game with these mechanics in it!

Friday, September 3, 2010

A nice overview in what way virtual goods can add value to gameplay or add value to your business model! Cool brands can actually make a lot of money selling their products within virtual environments (in-game). The horse in this example (slide 15) brought the developers of World Of Warcraft more than 2,5 million dollars in turnover in less than a day! More information through www.BrandNewGame.nl